Agatha and Tedros looked down, humiliated.
Yuba sighed. “Lucky for you, the League needs you as much as you need it.”
Torches roared to flame, lighting up a squad of strangers behind him in a giant cave headquarters the size of a small house.
“Presenting the honorable League of Thirteen, legendary legion of Good and Enlightenment,” Yuba proclaimed with an imperious smile, clearly expecting the Evers to look impressed, awed, or at least grateful for the glorious platoon that they had come all this way to see.
Agatha and Tedros blanched in horror instead.
Because the League of Thirteen that was their only hope to save Sophie, the League of Thirteen that was their only hope to stay alive … were all very, very old.
Agatha counted four men and four women—a geriatric gang of liver spots, turkey necks, hairy ears, foggy eyes, yellowed teeth, beady grins, bony limbs, and heads of sparse, colorless, or poorly dyed hair. Two of the eight were in rickety wheelchairs, three had walking canes, two were hunched and bandy-legged, and one was a morbidly obese woman in a muumuu, slathering on makeup at a mirror.
All of them had silver swan crests over their hearts, like Uma, Yuba, and the White Rabbit, badges of membership to a League her mother had trusted with her daughter’s life.
She sent us here for a reason, thought Agatha desperately. Would they rip off masks, revealing invincible warriors? Would they magically turn young like the School Master? Agatha held her breath, waiting and praying for something to happen …
The League blinked back, like fish in an aquarium, waiting for something to happen too.
“Told ya they wouldn’t recognize us,” grumped the fat woman at the mirror.
“Recognize you?” In the reflection, Agatha glimpsed the woman’s pink, hoggish pallor, squinty green eyes, wide jowls, hideously rouged cheeks, and nest of flat curls that she’d tried to dye brown and had turned blue instead. She looked like a doll salvaged from the bottom of a swimming pool. “I’m quite sure I’ve never seen you—or any of you—in my life,” Agatha said, scanning the group. She turned to Tedros, hoping he’d seen something in them she hadn’t, but her prince was red as a fire ant, about to explode.
“This is who’s supposed to get us to Sophie?” he barked, blue eyes raking the puke-colored carpet, flower-patterned sofas, moth-eaten curtains, and thirteen hard, thin mattresses split into two rows. “A retirement home for the about-to-be dead?”
Yuba yanked him to the corner. “How dare you speak that way to the League!” he hissed, peeking to make sure the others couldn’t hear. “You know the lengths I’ve gone to find them? To bring them here? And here you act as if they have to introduce themselves to you like common folk—you, a boy who has no accomplishments to his name—”
“Tell that to a king in a few weeks!” Tedros bellowed.
“You arrogant prat! The way you’ve bungled things, you won’t make it a few days, let alone to a coronation!” Yuba shot back.
“First thing I’ll do is outlaw old gnomes!”
“Listen, my mother knew the League would help us,” Agatha broke in, giving Tedros a “calm-down” look. “That’s why she wrote them. So clearly we’re missing something—”
“Yeah, like people who aren’t a thousand years old!” Tedros lashed, earning another miffed look from his princess. “What,” he said, turning his fury on her. “We barely escape our own execution, then we learn our best friend loves an Evil sorcerer, then we travel night and day, surviving zombies and witches and graves, all to find a League your mother promised would get us to Sophie and this is it? Bollocks. Let’s go. Better chance of breaking into the school ourselves—”
“She was my mother, Tedros,” Agatha said. “And I trust her more than anyone in this world to know what’s best for us. Even you.”
Tedros fell quiet.
Agatha glanced back and saw the old, swan-crested strangers completely ignoring them now, knitting, reading, napping, card playing, and pulling out false teeth to eat their gruel. Her faith in her mother suddenly wavered.
“Listen to me, both of you,” said Yuba. “When our thirteenth member returns, your questions will be answered. Until then, you both need some strong turnip tea and a bowl of oat porridge. Having survived in the Woods these last few months after 115 years of sanctuary at school, I know firsthand how intense your journey must have been—”
“Thirteenth member?” Agatha skimmed the room. “I only count eight.” Then she noticed the White Rabbit in the corner, slicing a carrot into fifths on a plate, the silver swan over his heart glimmering in torchlight. “Um, nine.”
“Ten, actually,” said Tedros, and Agatha followed his eyes to the silver swan on Yuba’s green coat.
“A founding member of the League,” the gnome puffed proudly. “And Uma makes eleven, of course, and—” Yuba flushed. “Uma! Goodness me!” He whirled to the Princess petrified in the corner. “Leaving her there like a house cat! Tink! Tink, where are you!”
Something snored loudly behind Agatha and she turned to see a pear-shaped fairy the size of a fist bolt awake and fall off a dirty ottoman. The fairy craned up groggily, with poufy gray hair, a green dress eight sizes too small, ragged gold wings, and garish red lipstick. Eyes darting right and left as if she knew she was supposed to be awake but had no idea why, she spotted Uma frozen in the corner and yelped, flapping and sputtering towards her like a dying bee. Then she slipped her hand into her dress, snatched a handful of what looked like moldy soot, and dumped it goonishly over Uma’s head.
Nothing happened.
“Dad took me to Ali Baba’s harem for my birthday once. This is so much more embarrassing,” Tedros mumbled, stomping towards the entrance hole to leave—
Uma coughed behind him. Tedros swiveled to see the princess levitating three feet off the ground, her skin filling out from pasty white to its usual rich olive color. Uma stretched her smooth, lithe arms into the air with a yawn, smiled at the fairy glassily … and collapsed to the ground, asleep once more.
“Here you were worried about your fairy dust being too old, Tink,” Yuba chuckled, patting the fairy’s head.
The fairy still looked gloomy and spurted squeaky gibberish.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Tink. You can’t expect to have the same stamina as when you were sixteen. Besides, we didn’t need Uma to fly from here to Shazabah; we just needed your dust to unpetrify her. A few sound hours of sleep and she’ll be good as new. Now where were we,” the gnome mulled, turning back to the Evers. “Oh yes, rabbit makes nine, Uma makes ten, I make eleven, and Tinkerbell makes twelve, so that just leaves—”
“Tinkerbell?”